Wow, fair enough then.
My interactions with the Home Office take place on two levels - one on a professional level as part of my job, and the other on a personal level due to my wife being a filipina.
On all occasions when I have had to deal with them on a professional level, I have found them to be utterly inept, incompetent and borderline useless, lacking even the simple ability to even maintain an up to date list of people who are in the country.
However, for the times when I have had to deal with them on a personal level, to be honest I have found them almost always (with minor exceptions) to be pretty friendly, helpful and 'human(e)' to me (us), even at times seemingly going out of their way to help. It is all a significant marked (albeit refreshing) contrast from the attitude demonstrated by the staff working overseas at the Embassy (in many Asian countries deemed 'poorer' then the UK).
And to be honest (further), from my professional dealings with them over the years, it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that they could make such a blunder by issuing a letter saying it will take 12 months, followed by the visa being issued two working weeks later. Sometimes their inefficiency works against you, other times you benefit. You never can tell with the Home Office.
I still stand by my main theme that Blunkett, due to the position he has, should have kept the hell away from any personal involvement in any application and especially one which involved the issuing of a visa for the nanny of his own child, including avoiding any "checking of the paperwork", for the same reasons that the original trial judge in OJ Simpson's trial stood down for part of the hearing (not because of the presence of his guilt in being unduly swayed, but to remove the suggestion that it could be there at all - can't remember exactly how it was phrased way back then or what the specific conflict of interest was - but you get my point..??).
However, I take your point that it may not be as unusual as it appears, despite the parade of immigration lawyers on the news saying the opposite, because I also do fully appreciate that such inconsistency and contradiction is far more widespread in the Home Office than normally gets trumpeted about on the news as well.
